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I'm doing a bit of a disk cleanup, and was surprised to find that my iPhoto library was a whopping 83gig. From what I understand iPhoto keeps a jpeg copy of each RAW photo in your library (but I could be wrong).

A lot of this space is because the images are in RAW format. Is there a way to either: - easily convert the raw photos to jpeg and remove the raw image file - remove the raw files and keep iPhoto's Jpeg version.

It would be awesome if this was a built in iPhoto feature, or a free app which does a little clean up for you. I have no need for the RAW files, but I don't want to lose the jpeg version.

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Tumbleweed..... – glenstorey Mar 20 '11 at 2:57
I don't know a direct answer to your question, I'm pretty sure iPhoto can do it, but I'm not 100% sure. That said, keep your RAWs. If you ever need to make any adjustments (contrast, exposure, color balance etc) the result will be much better using RAW images. You lose data when you convert to jpeg, the RAW has all of the data that the camera captured. – skarface Mar 31 '11 at 15:26

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

No there isn't. Pretty much the point of iPhoto is that it treats the original file as a "digital negative" and the non-destructive editing feature is based on that. So, iPhoto (and Aperture) never perform any operations on the Original, only on a copy.

It doesn't make multiple versions, tho. There's only one edited version.

What you can do: Export the Edited Versions. Delete the photos from iPhoto. Re-import the edited versions. You'll lose a lot - not least the ability to edit non-destructively - but if that's what you want.

A better solution is to use an app that does what you want - that is, edit the pics directly.

You know that you can store an entire iPhoto Library on a disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?

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